


The Scrap Heap

by Monopteros



Category: Transformers: Prime
Genre: Canon-Typical Violence, Ficlet Collection, Gen, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Open to Interpretation
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-07-16
Updated: 2020-07-16
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:07:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 590
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25305004
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Monopteros/pseuds/Monopteros
Summary: Scenes I couldn't or didn't want to make into bigger fics, quick pokes at a character's mind, and other small, mostly unconnected bits of finished writing collected under one title for convenience. Rating may change in the future depending on what else gets posted.
Kudos: 6





	The Scrap Heap

**Author's Note:**

> Soundwave approaches the beginning of the end.

Soundwave does not believe in Primus.

He knows nothing of creation. Cybertronians are not designed to multiply through the process of coming together physically. It is the Well's duty to spawn the sparks and grow the frames that will one day separate from the planet's core and race against the starving horrors in the darkness in a desperate bid to reach the open air in one piece. These days, even that much is no longer possible; the Autobots have thrown the AllSpark into the far reaches of outer space, and he knows not whether his home—if there is something left worth assigning the name by the time everything is over—will ever be able to welcome it and its gifts again.

Still. He understands what is required of him as a host for smaller mechs, and that, he thinks, is close enough to validate his opinion. If someone with an excess supply of stupidity were to threaten his deployers' existence, he would see to it that they never again forgot that possession of a fully functional vocalizer was a privilege, not a right. If his symbiotes were bleeding out on a field, he would readily drain his lines dry simply to buy them a few more minutes of precious life. He knows these things because he has already been forced to make those choices—because his grief over his early failures drove him to burn his world to the ground while his spark howled the names of his lord and loved ones.

Soundwave has never experienced something he could call a sign of celestial fury. No wielders of great and terrible powers have manifested and halted their efforts to tear themselves apart. The stars do not reach down to cradle the dead and weep; those who have perished merely rust away, forgotten, in a sea of rubble and empty shells. If there is an ancient being responsible for the formation of their species and the planet that spawned them, it has proven itself unworthy of worship. He will not bow to someone who cares so little for him.

He is less inclined to doubt the existence of Unicron. Cybertronian existence has long revolved around chaos and pain; it is entirely possible that the Devourer has already swallowed them whole and they have yet to realize that he is digesting them all day by day. Soundwave feels the growing holes in everyone's sparks, forced to marinate in their loneliness by a power he never asked to own. Spite and resentment fester deep within, bubbling and swelling into masses of purple poison, but never manage to fill the voids created by the process of carving out vital pieces of their identities. Mechs feast on each other's lives, impossible to sate, driven forward only by thoughts of their next meal.

Soundwave sequesters himself inside the Nemesis, denying himself kills and growing ever thinner, but he is only one mech, and this does not silence the hunger building in his core. Discipline and determination mute it, preserving what little is left of the mech he once was; for this, he is grateful. Few have been so lucky. He is all too aware, however, that he will soon be forced to choose between eating or becoming the eaten—and in both cases, to destroy the remainder.

Three years into their stay on Earth, Megatron allows himself to be consumed by dark energon.

Terrified of what is to come and powerless to stop it, Soundwave presses his fingers to Laserbeak's back and makes his decision.


End file.
